The Oasis of the Seas, ex aequo with its two siblings Harmony and Allure of the Seas, has been the largest cruise ship in the world for years. The boat has a length of no less than 360 meters; that is so long that you cannot have two of them moored at the cruise terminal on Wilhelmina Pier. There are no less than sixteen decks, so you could speak of a floating apartment building. Or perhaps a floating city, because in the center of the ship there are even a square and a park.
High-rise
In 2014, the gigantic vessel visited Rotterdam. The announcement of that visit prompted the first version of this blog post and the accompanying visualisations. Because how do you make clear how long such a ship is? By putting it upright! Because no matter how proud we are in Rotterdam of our high-rise buildings, they are dwarfs compared to the Oasis of the Seas. Even the Zalmhaven Tower, which was still in the drawing board stage at the time, is only 215 meters high, and that includes the antennas.
Space
And the funny thing is: there is still space on Wilhelmina Pier. One of the last open spaces on the pier, between the cruise terminal and the World Port Center, is now used as a parking lot. There have been plans for years to build a tower here, the Peter Stuyvesant Building, also known as Baltimore. But even with the update of this blog post in 2022, construction hasn’t even started. And as long as that doesn’t happen, it’s a theoretic possibility, such a vertical cruise boat skyscraper… It would be a nice addition to the skyline.
